Email is one of the highest-ROI marketing channels available — but its tracking has become increasingly unreliable. Apple Mail Privacy Protection has broken open rates for a large portion of email lists. Click-through rate is now the last reliable engagement signal, and getting the most from click data requires setting up links carefully.

URL shorteners play a specific supporting role in email: they provide a second layer of click analytics, clean up ugly affiliate and tracking URLs, and create readable links that look more trustworthy in plain-text emails.

Why email marketers use URL shorteners

Click tracking independent of your ESP. Email service providers (Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Klaviyo) track clicks server-side — but if you switch ESP, you lose that historical data. Short-link analytics are tied to your Shortfy account, not your email tool, and are fully portable.
Cleaner links in plain-text emails. Plain-text email is increasingly used for deliverability reasons. A 200-character UTM URL looks awful. A short link is clean and readable.
Hiding affiliate parameters. Affiliate links often contain long, recognisable tracking strings. Shortening presents a clean URL while preserving all parameters in the redirect.
Per-link click granularity. Some ESPs report total clicks per email. Short links give you clicks per individual link — essential when an email has multiple CTAs and you want to know which one drove results.
Geo and device data. Short-link analytics show which countries your most engaged subscribers are in and whether they are reading on mobile or desktop — data most ESPs do not provide on the free or basic tiers.

Combining short links with UTM parameters

The most powerful email tracking setup layers both:

Start with your destination URL: yoursite.com/product
Add UTM tags: yoursite.com/product?utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=may-launch&utm_content=cta-button
Paste the UTM URL into Shortfy to create a short link.
Use the short link in your email.

This gives you three data layers for each click: Shortfy's click count and geo data; your ESP's click tracking; and your analytics platform attributing the traffic to the correct UTM source for conversion measurement.

Use utm_content to differentiate links within the same email. If your email has a header image and a CTA button both linking to the same page, tag themutm_content=header-image and utm_content=cta-button respectively. You will see which placement drives more clicks — and use that to improve the next campaign.

URL shorteners and spam filters: what you need to know

This is the most common concern — and a legitimate one. Generic short-link domains (particularly bit.ly and tinyurl.com) have been used in phishing campaigns, causing some spam filters to treat them with suspicion.

Avoid generic shorteners in bulk cold email. If you are sending cold outreach at scale, generic short links can hurt deliverability. Use a custom domain or branded short link instead.
For warm subscriber lists the risk is low. Sending to an engaged, opt-in list from a reputable ESP is very different from cold bulk mail.
Test before your full send. Run your email through a deliverability tool (like Mail Tester or GlockApps) before sending to your full list.
Custom domains remove the risk entirely. A short link on your own domain (e.g. go.yourcompany.com) is treated identically to any other link to your site.

Tracking individual links within a single email

Most emails contain multiple links — a header image, one or two body links, and a CTA button. Creating a separate short link for each placement lets you see which one drives clicks and which is ignored. A simple naming convention:

shortfy.co/may-email-header → header image link
shortfy.co/may-email-body → mid-email text link
shortfy.co/may-email-cta → primary CTA button

After sending, click data shows which placement performed. Use that to decide where to invest design attention in the next campaign.

What short-link analytics reveal that ESPs do not

Geographic distribution — which countries your most engaged subscribers are in.
Device breakdown — are readers clicking from mobile or desktop? This directly informs landing page design priorities.
Time of click — when clicks happen relative to send time reveals how long it takes your audience to engage with email.
Historical data across ESP changes — your short-link analytics persist indefinitely, regardless of which email tool you use.

Get started

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URL Shorteners for Email Marketing: Track Every Click, Improve Every Campaign